Estimation
What are Story Points and Hours? Story points are a relative measure of the estimated complexity or effort required to implement a user story or feature in an agile software development process. Rather than estimating the actual time something will take, story points rate items on a scale to indicate how difficult the work is…
The Gap Between Story Points and Business Value Software development teams often use abstract story points to estimate the effort required to implement user stories in agile methodologies. However, business stakeholders are more concerned with concrete outcomes that add demonstrable value. This misalignment between abstract story points and tangible business needs creates tension in organizations….
Software development teams often struggle with making accurate estimates for completing work items and projects. Traditional time-based estimates using hours or days have several flaws that frequently lead to missed deadlines, rushed output, and subpar quality. Story points provide a superior alternative for teams to estimate relative complexity of product backlog items while supporting flexibility,…
Moving Beyond Time Estimates Software development teams have traditionally relied on time estimates to plan and schedule projects. However, time estimates have proven to be unreliable and often lead to missed deadlines, rushed output, and frustration among teams. Estimating the time required to complete software development tasks can be challenging as there are many unknowns…
Understanding Team Commitments and Estimates Setting realistic commitments and estimates is crucial for teams to meet goals and deliver projects successfully. However, often teams struggle to take full ownership over estimating work. Lack of clarity into planning processes or skills gaps can disempower team members from actively participating. By promoting transparency, collaboration, and accountability around…
Velocity measures the amount of work a team can complete within a sprint. However, only counting “done” user stories fails to show the true velocity of a team. Partially completed work still requires effort and pulls focus from finishing other stories. By quantifying and tracking incomplete work, teams can adjust their velocity to set realistic…
Defining Development Capacity Development capacity refers to the total amount of software development work a team can handle within a certain timeframe while maintaining quality and velocity. It is determined by the number of developers, their skills, experience levels, tools and processes used, and time available for focused work. Accurately defining and tracking capacity allows…
Improving Accuracy through Collaboration Estimating unfamiliar tasks is challenging due to unknowns and unpredictability. However, collaborative estimation techniques that aggregate inputs from multiple estimators can improve accuracy. By collecting diverse perspectives, inconsistencies and outliers can be detected and addressed. Further, estimators may have varying confidence levels that can be used to weight inputs. Aggregating Diverse…
Understanding the Problem: Inaccuracies When Estimating Unfamiliar Tasks Estimating the effort required to complete an unfamiliar task is inherently challenging. Without previous experience as a baseline, estimators often struggle to account for all components that factor into the total workload. This leads to inaccurate estimates that are frequently optimistic due to overlooking steps or misjudging…
The Challenge of Estimating New Tasks Project managers often face the challenge of estimating unfamiliar tasks that have never been done before in a project. Without previous experience or benchmarks, creating accurate estimates can be very difficult. Some examples of unfamiliar tasks include: – Developing a new software feature using an unfamiliar technology – Creating…
